no title

Concert review | OSU band adds familiar, fun dimension to Pops

The Picnic with the Pops concert featuring the Ohio State University marching band with the
Columbus Symphony will be performed at 8 p.m. Saturday in Columbus Commons, E. Rich and S. High
streets. For tickets, call 614-228-8600 or visit picnicwiththepops.com.

More Articles

Buckeye fever took over the Columbus Commons tonight for the annual Columbus Symphony Picnic
With the Pops concert featuring the Ohio State University Marching Band.

The selections in the first half of the program were upbeat and brisk, familiar yet
interesting for a pops audience. Most of the works have been featured prominently in movies or
television, and they became an invigorating backdrop for a beautiful evening.

Although the sound system is much improved from last year, the strings often sounded anemic
last night and the upper woodwinds dominated. At times, it sounded more like a televised broadcast
than a live concert.

It was because of this lingering acoustical imbalance that the opening selection,
Hellmesberger's Danse Diabolique in D Minor, never managed to communicate passion or immediacy.
This sterile feeling came and went throughout the program.

Nevertheless, the orchestra played with precision and determination. One strength of the
sound system, at least in most of last night’s works, was that the musicians’ articulation remained
crisp.

Conductor Albert-George Schram was his usual blend of insightful, self-effacing, and
teasingly forthright. When introducing Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda, he remarked, “I think
you will like this. And if you don’t — be quiet.”

He convinced a large portion of the audience to participate in the hand jive (from Grease)
and a few to mambo (or at least shuffle) in the aisles with a medley of well-known mambo tunes.

Although the symphony’s portion of the program was admirable, the sea of scarlet shirts that
filled the park revealed the real reason people had come.

The OSU Marching Band never disappoints. An arrangement of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and a
medley of music from the video game Halo were both striking.

Of course, the band interspersed their “serious” music with popular school songs. Columbus
will interject “O-H! I-O!” into just about anything, and the crowd snapped to action for such
classics as Hang on Sloopy.

When the two groups joined forces at the end of the program, the sound remained surprisingly
balanced. An arrangement of the Triumphal March from Verdi’s Aida was commanding, and Sousa’s Stars
and Stripes Forever is always an entertaining piece of Americana.

Mars and Jupiter from Holst’s The Planets, near the end of the program, were very different
from the rest of the repertoire but were a wonderful inclusion. Their rich dissonances and thick
textures were perfect to wind down a night under the stars with friends, food, and music.